Still smirking at justice
As OJ Simpson plans a visit to his murdered wife’s grave and pockets a huge pension, why he’s . . .
ALL He needed to do was just show a measure of contrition, and reassure the four-strong parole board panel that they weren’t releasing a man who would re-offend. But prisoner 1027820, better known as OJ Simpson, instead gave a performance of astonishing self-delusion and arrogance.
‘I basically have spent a conflict-free life . . . I’m pretty good with people,’ he said by video link to Thursday’s hearing in Carson City, nevada, seemingly forgetting the fact that he pleaded guilty to beating his wife nicole Brown Simpson during their tumultu-ous marriage.
And when he then downplayed his role in the crime that subsequently landed him in prison — a bungled armed robbery of a sports memorabilia dealer — he told the board: ‘nobody has ever accused me of pulling any weapon on anyone.’
Perhaps it had slipped his mind that he was once accused of using a knife to slash and stab ms Brown Simpson and her friend, ron Goldman, leaving them dead outside her Los Angeles home.
His defence lawyer, malcolm LaVergne, later admitted he’d been trying to ensure that the ‘10,000-pound elephant’ in the parole board room ‘never started rearing its head or knock-ing things around’.
That elephant is the crime for which most people believe Simpson should be behind bars — the 1994 slaughter of his ex-wife and mr Goldman, a 25-year-old waiter.
He was sensationally acquitted despite compelling evidence of guilt. But then — in a supreme irony — ended up jailed for a far lesser crime, the clumsy robbery in a Las Vegas hotel room in which at least some of the haul was goods Simpson legally owned.
now, having won parole, Simpson will leave Lovelock Correctional Centre, nevada, in october after serving the minimum nine years of his 33-year sentence.
Intending to start a new life in Florida near his family, he has vowed to ignore the intense public interest that will follow him. ‘I’m at a point in my life where all I want to do is spend as much time as I can with my children and my friends,’ said the father of four.
The furore over his release illustrates how, more than 20 years after the ‘Trial of the Century’, no issue quite illustrates the deep racial divide in the U.S. than Simpson’s guilt or innocence.
It has since been forcefully argued that the murder trial jury — composed of nine blacks, one Hispanic and two whites — had, with their acquittal, been seeking ‘revenge’ for years of racist, often brutal, behaviour by the LA police.
TO MILLIONS of other Americans, however, Simpson — once one of the country’s best loved sports stars — benefited from one of the most grievous miscarriages of justice in U.S. legal history.
Those hoping his nine years in jail may have provided at least some justice for the double-murders saw little evidence of it from his televised parole appearance.
Simpson looked trim and bright-eyed, far younger than his 70 years and markedly improved on the chubby-faced, bloodshot-eyed man who appeared in court four years ago seeking an appeal.
His appearance bore out reports from prison guards that life behind bars has been relatively easy.
Although some of his fellow 1,680 inmates are murderers and rap-ists, the prison has a reputation as one of the state’s most civilised.
A former guard described it as a ‘cruise ship surrounded by barbed wire’. What’s more, it seems Simp-son has been treated as a VIP by both staff and prisoners.
He has lived in a medical cell a third larger than a normal one, with a single cellmate. owing to Simpson’s wealth, he has been able to treat successive cellmates as servants, paying them a small wage to keep their cell clean, and cook and serve food.
Simpson pockets an estimated $25,000 a month from his national Football League pension as well as money from a private pension and the Screen Actors Guild (having taken Hollywood roles after his retirement from football).
He therefore enjoys fried chicken, beans and noodles sold by the prison commissary that other inmates would regard as luxuries.
Simpson has a photo of himself with his murdered ex-wife on a shelf in his cell, while the walls have pictures of his children and American football stars.
He is largely free to roam the prison and at night is frequently accompanied by his ‘entourage’, sports-obsessed inmates who worship him. He also has an easy job cleaning gym equipment.
The facility has plenty of sports fields, but knee injuries have limited what Simpson can do. He still lost 50lb by walking around the running track and working out. Clearly, he wanted to look in fine fettle for the parole board.
He was also able to impress panel members by saying he leads a Baptist prayer group, mentors inmates, coaches sports teams and acts as umpire in a prison yard softball league.
He claims he is a peacemaker in jail, where fellow inmates affec-tionately use his old nickname of ‘The Juice’. Just as police officers were awed by Simpson’s charm and fame, ignoring his wife’s desperate predictions he would kill her, so prison guards now address him as ‘mr Simpson’.
Although he has a clean discipli-nary record, there have been tensions. A white supremacist inmate once objected to Simpson going to the front of the queue in the canteen. He threatened a fight, but was calmed down.
His former manager, norman Pardo, said Simpson initially had trouble coming to terms with prison life and was ‘depressed’. He also put on weight, succumbing to his weakness for biscuits, which aggravated his diabetes.
Since then, however, he has developed into a model prisoner.
He is clearly desperate to get out. Parole was ‘all he thinks about’, said Jeffrey Felix, a retired guard who got to know him well.
And what will he do with his freedom? He will remain on parole until September 2022, submitting monthly reports to a supervising officer and having to get written permission every time he wants to leave Florida.
It’s unclear where he will live, with the Florida state having not yet officially given him permission and his one-time miami home now on the market for $1.2 million.
He’ll be banned from drinking alcohol, will only be able to use legally prescribed drugs and can’t own weapons.
Violation of any terms of his parole means he’ll be returned to prison for a sentence that could last another 24 years.
FrIendS say Simpson intends to focus on his children. He has two grown-up children with nicole — daughter Sydney, 31, and Justin, 28, who both live in Florida. He also has a son, Jason, 46, and daughter, Arnelle, 48, with his first wife, marguerite.
only Arnelle has spoken publicly about their father, defending him and writing on behalf of all four children to the parole board in Simpson’s support.
She has described him as ‘my best friend and my rock’, adding: ‘He truly is remorseful and we just want him to come home so that we can move forward.’
In the years after his acquittal for murder, the disgraced Simp-son repeatedly got into trouble.
He was accused, but acquitted, of battery and burglary during a motoring dispute. His miami home was raided by the FBI for drugs. He was fined for speeding his motor boat and for pirating a satellite TV broadcaster’s signal.
But those close to him insist he won’t risk returning to prison. ‘I don’t think he will even get a park-ing ticket,’ says Jeffrey Felix.
However, there are many who will do their best to ensure he doesn’t live a quiet life.
He still reportedly owes 99per cent of the $33.5million in compensation he was ordered to pay the families of his ex-wife and mr Goldman after being found lia-ble for their deaths in a 1997 civil trial. Simpson is said to have ‘barely made a dent’ in paying that money as the victims’ families accuse him and his financial advisers of shield-ing his millions from them.
much of his wealth is said to be untouchable because it is in pension funds.
Yesterday, as U.S. newspapers screamed ‘The Juice is loose!’, a close friend, Tom Scotto, revealed that one of his first acts on being freed will be to visit the grave of the ex-wife whom Simpson still insists he didn’t murder.
It would be an astonishingly callous act by the most notorious man in America who insists he’s found Christ and now wants only the quiet life.